Convicted killer is 1st death-row inmate resentenced to life

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – One of two men sentenced to death for the slayings of a mother and her two daughters during a 2007 home invasion in Connecticut has been resentenced to life in prison.

Steven Hayes is the first of 11 death-row inmates to be resentenced since the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in August that their sentences violated the state constitution's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

State lawmakers abolished Connecticut's death penalty in 2012, except for those already sentenced to death.

A judge on Wednesday imposed six consecutive life sentences on Hayes for the murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, 17-year-old Haley and 11-year-old Michaela, in Cheshire. Hawke-Petit's husband and the girls' father, Dr. William Petit, was badly beaten but survived.